“Still, it’s already booked,” Wyatt says. “Might as well take advantage of the perks, including free doctor’s appointments.”
“They aren’t ‘free,’ ” I reply. The MotherWise program is mostly funded through taxation.
“You know what I mean,” Wyatt says, his tone softening. “I better get back at it. And I’ll pick something up for dinner on the way home. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off and rest up?”
It doesn’t sound like a suggestion, the way he says it.
“You’re measuring right on schedule, but your iron’s low, as we suspected, and your blood pressure is higher than I would like,” Dr. Rice says, reviewing my test results. My aching tattoo has also darkened slightly—barely noticeable, unless you are looking at it with a trained eye, which Dr. Rice has. This darkening confirms the low iron, he tells us.
“You had elevated pressure with your last pregnancy, correct?”
“With my first one, yes.” I clear my throat. Wyatt takes my hand. He’s come along to the appointment despite my assurances it was unnecessary. But now I’m glad he’s here, as a few blips have shown up. Maybe enough to explain why I’ve been off recently.
“Our second pregnancy didn’t go full term,” Wyatt says. I hear the strain in his voice and press my tongue hard to the roof of my mouth.Do not cry.“But Tilly’s blood pressure was mostly normal with that one.”
Dr. Rice offers a smile, his eyes kind as they connect to mine. He’s about my age, maybe a couple of years older. Slight salt-and-pepperhighlights in his otherwise dark, closely trimmed hair. Tall and slim. He wears a wedding band, and I wonder how many children he has with his teacher wife. There are no pictures in his immaculate though impersonal office, the white walls containing only framed degrees. “Other than those two issues, which at this point I’m not overly concerned by, everything looks great, Tilly.”
“Thank you.” I think about Poppy and how beautifully that pregnancy was going, until it wasn’t. My stomach twists uncomfortably.
“So, let’s continue on as we are,” the doctor says. He shifts in his chair, and the slight movement makes me strangely queasy. “Home rest; we’ll add twice-daily blood pressure checks to your protocol so we can keep an eye on things.”
Wyatt stands when Dr. Rice does, and shakes his outstretched hand. “Thank you, Dr. Rice. Appreciate the thoroughness.”
I’m about to do the same—stand and shake the doctor’s hand, which he extends my way—when a woman steps into my peripheral vision. She’s behind the doctor, to his left, dressed in a familiar outfit. The same one she was wearing when I saw her at the cemetery. A short navy-blue lab coat over a white T-shirt and dark pants. Her hair is pulled back into a low bun, reading glasses perched atop her head.
“Mathilde,”she says, saying my name exactly as it is supposed to be said.MAH-tealed.
But the tone is different from how I remember my mother sounding. Her voice had a musical lilt to it, as though she sang in a choir in her free time. This version of my mother has none of that lilt, her tone flat and lacking warmth. Also, there’s something odd about the way she’s holding herself, her head tilted sharply right, at an angle that isn’t natural.
My throat closes. I cannot speak; I cannot breathe. I don’t hear Wyatt or Dr. Rice calling my name, though later, when Wyatt recounts this story, he tells me they were practically shouting at me. “It was like you were just…gone. It scared the shit out of me.”
“The work doesn’t like to be kept waiting, my darling,”my mother says in that strange voice. We lock eyes, and her gaze penetrates deep into me.“It isn’t wise to keep the artist waiting.”
—
“Tilly, Tilly! Okay, babe…Christ…take it easy. That’s it, deep breaths.”
Wyatt’s crouched in front of me, hands on my arms, squeezing them too hard. I’m breathing heavily, and it takes a long moment for my eyes to focus.
“What are you doing?” I ask, confused about why he’s gripping me this tightly. It hurts.
“What amIdoing?” He glances over my shoulder. “Dr. Rice, she’s back.”
I’m aware of a commotion behind me. My eyes dart to Dr. Rice’s now-empty chair and to the space behind it. No one is there. My mother is gone.
A machine beeps loudly, and something slips over my pointer finger. Someone presses a mask to my face and I breathe deeply, as instructed. The fogginess fades.
“How are you feeling, Tilly?” Dr. Rice steps into view, and Wyatt stands to get out of the way. I look at the finger sleeve, see the MotherWise logo and a series of small blinking lights. The beeping is incessant.
“I’m fine,” I reply, my voice muffled behind the oxygen mask.
“Are you cold?” Wyatt asks. I nod, trembling with shivers that course through me every few seconds. It’s as though the temperature in the room has dropped twenty degrees in seconds.
“Can we get a warmer, please?” Dr. Rice says, and soon a thin silver sheet is draped around my shoulders, the heat of it instant. My shivering subsides. Wyatt paces back and forth, casting a quick glance my way with every turn. He can’t stand still when he’s nervous.
“I suspect it’s the low iron.” Dr. Rice checks my vitals through hisMedAlert glasses. Wyatt finally stops pacing, crosses his arms over his chest. But his fingers tap in a continuous rhythm, which tells me he’s still keyed up.
“My wife had the same issue with her pregnancies,” Dr. Rice says, addressing Wyatt. “She would get dizzy if she stood up too quickly.”
